A Link to Time
by King of the Red
Summary: Where have all the fairies gone? A Hero of Time returns Home after being away for Time without End. The Lost Woods hold many Secrets, most of them Shadows, waiting for he whom brings the Light.
1. Act 1, Chapter 1: Homewood

When time flows as if its fled.

Where the lands turn from green to red.

Why the paths of heroes have gone untread.

How the crown is dead.

Whom holds power, rules instead.

_-A Founder's Requiem_

* * *

A lone figure in a forest green cloak sat cross legged before a fire, two fairies fluttering around veiled shoulders and twittering in high pitched voices. A hat and high cowl obscured the figure's facial features, save for the hints of two pointed ears and piercing blue eyes. There was a certain music bubbling from out of the surrounding forest, something familiar and yet oh so ancient. It was a song from so very long ago, and the figure seemed to be put at ease by it, almost hypnotised into letting down a guard. Almost.

Thus it was to the horror of the Moblyn ambushers when their surprise attack was met with cold blue steel and devilish fairy fire. A long and magnificently crafted sword was peeking by several feet from out of the folds of the green cloak, held by a warrior's glove tooled in the finest titan's leather. Where once the figure had been sitting, listening; now it was standing and the Moblyns were no more. One sword flick and then another, the two opportunistic creatures paying for their foolhardy ambitions. Blue steel was sheathed, and forest green cloak enveloped a figure's form once again.

'Look,' pitched one fairy, 'Listen,' said another. The figure cocked its head, a pointed ear tip becoming clearly visible; the song from out the forrest had stopped.

Sharp blue eyes followed the voice of the first fairy to something buried on the corpse of the smaller of the two Moblyns. It was buried in the tunic of the Moblyn, attached by a leather thong and worn around the neck. The first fairy darted and dashed in and out of the clothing, retrieving the item by the cord. Fluttering up, the fairy dangled it in front of the figure's shaded face; it was an artifact of memory, and a device matching something the figure already carried. It was an ocarina, a forest ocarina. A maker's mark was etched on the corner of ocarina device; seeing it made the figure blanch visibly, obvious even in the dark of the night and the concealment of a voluminous cloak. It was the mark of Saria.

* * *

* * *


	2. Act 1, Chapter 2: We are Moblyn

Time flows like a river…

Currents wax and weft, twisting upon themselves…

There are many paths: many tributaries, many offshoots.

Some paths are vibrant, full of life, full of potential futures.

However, there are others. Others where there is no future.

There are paths where the future ends.

Enter: Dead Time

_-A Thesis on Tempus Necros_

* * *

Snap, the figure in forest green had snatched up the ocarina from the hovering fairy's grasp and grimly tucked it about his neck, to sit snugly hidden from sight, next to the shattered remnants of the far older one from a childhood oh so very long ago. There should be no more Ocarinas, and the Kokiri village should have been safe. This was something the green male _knew_ to be true.

"What's wrong?" bubbled Tatl, "Is there something wrong with Saria," tinkered Navi. The cold, piercing blue eyes did not even flicker in recognition of the tiny figures' combined babbling. Instead, the now blanched faced hunter stood veiled in his cloak, feeling the wind batter about the folds ineffectually, and watching the pitch and yaw of the leaves under that wind. The forest wasn't silent… there was always… something to be heard.

Arctic eyes flickered, that gaze darting and searching along edges of the trees, a rustle here, a rustle there not at all attuned to the steady rhythm of the windblown wood. Tjhe figure's stolid and observational stance seemed to blend and blur then, as if there were two separate figures posing in the same moment of action. One stood there, listening and watching, and the other was already in motion, cold blue steel drawn. Another moment passed and there was only one figure again, cold steel sheathed into the base of a tree, the action over.

He stood there, his sword buried into the base of the nearby tree, pinning a tall and slender Moblyn into the trunk. The initial ambushers had not been alone. Now with the ring of wet steel, the green cloaked figure drew his sword back out from the now dead Moblyn's midsection and flicker flash, flicker flash, flicker flash....

Three well time swipes of the blade, hand flickering briefly in motion with each glint of the blade flashing in each slashing arch. Now three more Moblyns had joined the first, dead against the tree. With the tree gathered dead in a heap at the base of the green figure's feet, Moblyns it seemed, were not nearly fast enough for the green hunter, no matter how abruptly they struck in surprise from the shelter of the trees.

"There's no more Ocarinas," Rattled Tatl, inspecting the bodies. There was a simple nod at this, the vaguest twitch to the lithe green-cloaked figure's neck in recognition. The hunter knelt down beside one of the Moblyns, and pulled back the edges of their crude tunics, inspecting faded brands of a fist clutching a skull. "Kul'ara tribe," jingled Navi, hovering over the hunter's shoulder. The hunter in green released the tunics, each in turn, instead shifting his grip, and cleansing the blood from off his blade before sheathing it into his back scabbard.

The figure in green frowned briefly, those piercing, intelligent blue eyes half closing at the fading sounds. The familiar rustlings in the surrounding forest that had accompanied the ambushers were going away. Soon they would be gone. Whomever or whatever had sent these creatures to attack him, would know soon. Know that he was still here, the attack had failed. More would come looking; their master would want to know why.


	3. Act 1, Chapter 3: Time without End

Remember,

For those who seek the paths,

Time is a Skein of many Unknowns.

A web of so many interconnecting strands,

It becomes all but impossible to trace history.

Yet it is the task of all Sages of Light

To illuminate the darkened paths,

And to light the candle

Of knowledge.

_-To Light a Candle

* * *

_

It had been long… so very long since he had been home. Termina had been but the first, and so dream like… And yet the woods, this Great Lost Wood… connected to so many worlds. The man in green was the hunter and the wanderer, a seeker of the lost paths to find his way back to a world forever closed to him. He was the Hero of Time, who had given up not only his youth and but also his future to save the world from darkness.

A darkness that had infected the very heart of the Sacred Realm itself, twisted it all somehow. The name of that darkness was even forbidden to be spoken now, and pray be forgotten. Naming It created a link between yourself and the darkness, allowed it a peek (albeit a very tiny one) into your heart and through your eyes.

The Hero was the one being in all of Time that could enter the heart of the Great Wood and come out the other side again. It is said that the Great Lost Wood is so vast it cannot be held in any one world or any one time. Rather a piece of the Lost Woods grows in every world and every time. A Hero may enter the woods and come back out again, unchanged and unclaimed, if not unchallenged by Them. However, the Hero of Time was able to not only enter the Woods and come out again, but _he_ could come out again on another side.

So it was that the hunter had been through these Woods many times, into the heart and back out again. Always to a different world and different time. Some Heroes have only one time and one adventure, but this Hero has had many. Termina was but the first of many new worlds he has saved, always fading thereafter to be remembered only in song and story. This is the fate of the Hero of Time, to wander the woods for: time without end.


	4. Act 1, Chapter 4: Stars Above

We who are the stars

We shine brightly upon you all

Our silent music lost in cold lights

For those who hear their melody

Hear prophecy and portent

Ware the coming of:

A wanderer.

_-Symphony of Stars

* * *

_

Frozen, familiar heavens twinkled vaguely through the holes in the water stained ceiling of the Cathedral. Once had stood an entire town, now there were only ruins that served as the Moblyn garrison, with the Cathedral as the barracks chief among these. On a hewn throne, carved out of an Altar to the Three, sat a creature quite unlike the hobbled soldiers about him, and it did not look happy… Well actually it did, sort of. The face was locked in a skeletal rictus portraying macabre laughter. However the eyes, two pinpricks of azure light appearing vague and rather bored flared to an angry violet as the droning of the Moblyn before the seated figure carried on.

The seated figure looked very much like a stalfose, but with a taller and lither frame, its bones yellowed with age and missing most of the lower jawbone. The ivory and armor body was wrapped in a tatter of faded green rags, and the twin lights hovering in the hollow sockets that passed for its eyes appeared quite intent. They leveled that angry violet gaze upon the Moblyns, whom unlike the rest standing guard to the sides of the altar chamber, were cowering in clear terror directly before the seated figure.

"So in other words… you failed…." Rasped the dead and dry voice like a handful of knuckle bones tossed rattling into the wind. The broken jaw did not move at all with the words, but those angry violet eyes quivered and pulsed in tune to each note. "So… what am I to do with you all now? What use are you to me if you cannot stop even one invader to my premises?" Hissed the skeletal voice, seeming to form the bones of words, but unable to give them the full voice like the living might.

One of the Moblyns moaned, and its comrade, seeming sterner than the rest smacked the moaner and mumbled something whining and unintelligible to the enthroned figure. Whatever was said, it seemed to placate the figure at first, "Alright… fair enough," Rasped the seated figure, raising a bony hand to the skeletal jaw and seeming to consider the new information. The Moblyns seemed to all but sag into each other with relief, as a single skeletal finger scraped with a grating sound over the broken jaw.

"However…," grated the seated, raggedy figure, "I only needed _one_ of you to make the report," As those words dropped out in a vehement and dangerously quiet hiss, the cool azure eyes flared gold briefly and three of the four surviving Moblyns dropped dead, their faces appearing to twist into visages of mortal terror, hearts giving way. "The rest were of no use, and were better off dying in that cursed forest. None may fail me twice…" The eyes were the cold azure again, watching the sole remaining Moblyn being not of the guards, "Remember that," Grated the seated figure, "Dismissed."


	5. Act 1, Chapter 5: Stealth

Five little faeries dance in a line

Five little sprites, dance at the same time

One slips and the other trips

Hey diddle diddle, the black oak fiddle

Four little faeries dance in a line….

_-Excerpt from the Black Oak Fiddle, a Hylean Children's Song

* * *

_

Edging along the foundation stones of a crumbling fence that once marked the boundary to the ruined village, the green cloaked figure had followed the clumsy tracks of the retreating Moblyns through the trees at a determined but careful pace. Where once he might have been young and mad, rushed headlong in a direction in a torrent of righteous passion as many Heroes did, this one, long passed that point, chose a stealthy and measured approach. There was a distant pang in his chest, in response to the feeling of that once familiar instrument pressing against the skin of his neck, but that was the entirety of what the Hero felt. One by one, there was the barest sound of a muffled scuffle and then silence, like some obscure perpetration of Morse code: muffle, silence, muffle, silence, muffle, silence. No telltale flash of blue steel to alert the sentries, rather the green cloaked figure stuck to the shadows and slipped up to each Moblyn in turn, taking a quiet and roundabout route, making a cautious circuit into the camp. Abducting a guard one at a time with one arm disabling them, and the other silencing their mouths and slowly choking them out. A simple muffle and then silence, again and again, that faint pattern of death easily overlooked, even by keen hearing.

A sharp grating sound of a bony finger over a broken jaw bone, as the lithe and raggedy Stalfose sat in quiet repose, the azure lights turned inward, dull with apparent introspection and rhythmic scraping. A flicker of green obscured those cold stars overhead for one fleeting moment, a blurred visage passing over a hole in the Cathedral roof, a Hero's scant glance surveying the inhabitants of the altar room below, and then… well one might expect some gallant crashing down through the ruined ceiling with the hero proceeding to do battle with the many Moblyns standing guard in some dramatic fashion. Nope. Subtler, there was a shink of drawn and slashed steel, followed by the bang and flash of a deku nut, and the cacophony ending only after the rapid strumming of a bow string. Twang, twang, twang, twang… etc. When the flash and cacophony ceased, standing there, perched behind the hewn altar-throne for cover, was the figure in green, bow leveled on the one surviving Mobley guard.

"Where is she?!" Tinkled one of the fairies, now appearing from out of the folds of the hunter's cloak; their light had been hidden, not giving the hunter away. "What have you done with Saria?" Chimed the little faeries, in place of the hunter speaking, was he mute or just disinclined to talk? It didn't matter. The hunter had stolen his way in, scouted the main barracks, then slipped into the chamber, and decapitated the seeming most powerful enemy off the get-go. The stalfose lay crumpled before the feet of the altar; the detached skull had tumbled and rolled, coming to rest in the center of the room, the sockets no longer azure, but having dimmed to black. The Hunter had struck, and then used a Deku nut to cover his next moves, using the throne as a shield and firing off arrows into all but one of the remaining guard Moblyns, having excised the room of enemies in half a minute.

"Start talking!" Hissed the second fairy, its high pitched voice should not have been intimidating. However, perhaps that grim faced hunter and his lethally leveled bow, armed with an arrow focused directly towards the Moblyn's heart, more than made up for pitch. The Moblyn seemed remarkably disciplined, it was visibly shaking, but it locked itself in place, uncertain, analyzing its dire situation. It grunted a crude response, communicating in affect that it had no idea what the two little light-balls were asking about. The hunter did not seem amused, but obliged to ease off the bow slightly, pulling out an ocarina, and allowing the maker's mark to be clearly evident. The one fairy hovered over mark in the air and rattled, "Where did you get this? Who made it?" The Moblyn stared perplexed, and then pointed down to the collapsed stalfose. One of the fairies seemed uncertain, tinkling, "Maybe we shouldn't of killed the big one, boss." The hunter frowned slightly, then shook his head mutely in response, seeming on the verge of adding something when-

There was a blur of motion, a twang of the bow, and a squeal of pain before a clunk of a collapsing body. Seizing the moment when the bow had relaxed in the Hero's grip and turned to communicate with the fairy companion, the Moblyn had hurled its spear at the figure in green. The cloaked hunter had responded to this almost immediately, rolling down behind the throne again, evading the spear, and coming around again on the other side to put an arrow into the Moblyn's gut, dropping the creature painfully, but keeping it very much alive… for the moment at least. Wearing that ubiquitously indifferent expression, the hunter glared at the Moblyn, his only other emotion evident being displeasure shown in the slight down-turns to either side of his mouth. Those hard blue eyes were utterly unfeeling, uncompromising, they bored into the dying Moblyn, whom flinched (disciplined or not) under that critical gaze. It grunted bitterly, asking them to just end its life, which was odd for a Moblyn. Treacherous and cruel, Moblyns were innately cowards, that was why they worked so well together in mobs, fear of one another, fear of a leader, fear of those stronger… also why they were so often minions: easily dominated.

"Should we show mercy, boss? This one told us what we wanted to know, for what little good it does us?" Rattled one fairy. "Mercy? Leave it to suffer. Moblyns don't show mercy, why should we offer the same?" Pitched the second fairy. Ignoring both, the hunter turned away from the paralyzed Moblyn. While the two faeries argued, the hunter went to inspect the stalfose's body, seeming long since used to his companions' ethereal bickering. The figure in green ran a gloved finger over the lithe skeleton, tracing over the yellowed ivory armor that seemed to have grown out of, and still a par tof the skeleton. The finger traced over the faded green rags clinging to the body like a river of green shadows. The Hero frowned visibly somewhat, upon further inspection of the green rags, a horrible grating voice giving word to the single thought bouncing around in the hunter's head. "Kokiri." The hunter thought right as the gaunt, grating voice spoke. "Kokiri."


	6. Act 1, Chapter 6: Stars Below

Peer into the darkness,

See the darkness leering back at you?

There are things in the dark, thing that we can never name.

Yet just the same, you must know them all.

Tyrant, demon, sin, atrocity… know them all.

But Sage of Light, never speak of them.

Speak of them… and They answer.

_-The Sage's Silence

* * *

_

Kokiri? Really? Those hauntingly cold blue eyes turned over shoulder to regard the scene behind, tracing over cobbles and ruin, mortar strewn in cathedral ruin. They alighted in that glacial gaze to that dismembered skull; sockets dim as the wells' bottoms and twice as silent. Nothing stirred within the skull, as that hollow and hoary boned voice retched out the words of declamation, and without surcease. The voice confirmed the rags origins, and repeated that word in otherworldly grave born trill, almost a mocking choir of rustle and clatter, that word of dead and scorn. "Kokiri."

Not a stir, aught but still, was the skull, voice a mocking scorn: but without, and not within the stalfose confine. That glacial gaze flittered and flicked again, alighting further, to the only other figure present in the room, something buried amidst the coughing and gasping of the dying, perforated Moblyn. Amidst those coughing, hacking fits, amongst the creature's lack of wits, had grown steely eyes aglow, and a sneering cowl of a smile, mocking and in the know. "Did you think it would be that easy?" Rasped the Moblyn; speaking with a voice not of the Moblyn, but something deeper and more grating, its words formed out of the series of spine wracking, blood and acid driven coughing fits. The Moblyn was dying, its already pitiful life force diminished, however whatever remained of it had been seized upon by an otherworldly force, by whatever had been housed within the stalfose moments earlier.

It looked upon the hunter, from where it had collapsed, and now newly, (albeit slowly) risen to staggering feet. It seemed taller, still frail for all that an arrow was protruding by several inches out of the creature's abdomen, clutching feebly with one scrabbling claw to its ragged chest, but taller. And for all the apparent weakness, those eyes… oh those eyes were alight in blue abyss, their azure fury were what was amiss, in that dying and otherwise retched creature. That unnerving feature was not a glacial glance like the hunter's eyes, which met the ghastly orbs without a blink. No, these two glowing eyes were of cool anger, flickering violet at the edges, and they were as cold as the hunters'. But they felt more, even if it was only felt wroth in fury, mixed with that black, mocking scorn.

Sneering derisively, the Moblyn stood even taller, drawing up the sagging frame… it was a disturbing sight to see, and hear… there were several grotesque pops and creaks to the form, as if the skeleton were standing taller then all the mass of muscle and flesh; dragging the fixed joints along, with or without regard for their inferior stature. The fingers flexed in a crooking arch, matching the wretched twist of the Moblyn's sneering smile, a smile growing gradually wider than the face that wore it. "Come to me then... interloper...; see what happens to all who would traverse in _my_ domain without warrant…" Each word came rattling out of the strained chest of the over-stretched Moblyn like the tumble of fractured dice pronouncing an end to some once fortuitous fate... coming up: snake eyes, doom.

It leered at the hunter; flexing its fingers again, flesh popping like a pale skewer thrust through grape or sausage, five of them popping at the same time. Flesh was flayed and fell away, exposing the talons of natural bone beneath, elongated, flesh hanging off the bone loosely in strips: wetness oozed fresh blood with each renewed finger flexing. There was the mad wrapping of bone on brick and board, as the form stepped out of its own boots, bony toes leading in a wrap for each grotesque and sickening step forward. The face split and ravaged in hideous grin, skeleton continuing to grow out of the Moblyn, and then into something likened unto a Stalfose and yet not... somehow it was something more.

"Nice trick," Rattled one fairy, "Have any others?" Tatl taunted the unholy specter before them, standing tall over the hunter's shoulder. "Shhhh" hissed the second fairy, buzzing about the hunter's head, "Do you think it's wise to provoke every monster we come across?!" "Hasn't stopped the boss from beating them all, has it?" Countered Tatl. "Yet... at least." Cautioned Navi. The skeletal Moblyn's azure eyes flickered with that self-same lethal edge of angry violet flare, but there was also a distinct glimmer of some macabre amusement in their lurid glow. The haunting voice finally answered, "Many and more, little creature. You have no idea what you challenge little puffball." It sneered again, this time its mad hacking laughter was accompanied by that scraping gesture, the bone talon sloughing the flesh off the jawbone, almost thoughtfully. Worst of all to an observer, though: looking around the edges of the twin violet-tinged azure lights, one saw the horror of the Moblyn's real eyes; part of it, its flesh at least (bound to the alien force wearing its bony frame) was still very much... alive.


	7. Act 1, Chapter 7: Futility

Four little faeries dance in a line

Five little sprites, dance at the same time

One splits and the other skips

Hey diddle diddle, the black oak fiddle

Three little faeries dance in a line….

_-Excerpt from the Black Oak Fiddle, a Hylean Children's Song

* * *

_

Twang, twang. Azure eyes flared golden as the skeletal form raised one talon, lancing out a bolt of pure will. Twice the bow was fired, the hunter rolling away on reflex, the faeries scattered in response to this. The hewn throne was enveloped by a brief blaze of golden light, and there was a loud snapping on the throne's back. It crumpled much as might a spine, had the bolt hit something living, rather than the dead altar. The two arrows had landed home, with a double spurt and thunk, the arrows piercing the Moblyn's eyes and landing in the back of its skull. The flesh twitched and the Moblyn skeleton staggered for a moment, lurching to the side.

"Got 'im!" Pulsed Tatl, cheering for the green cloaked hunter. "No…" Rattled Navi, seeing further, noting that even as the hunter put away his bow, he drew his sword instead. "No?" Fussed Tatl, buzzing around the Cathedral ceiling and staring at the Moblyn. It was standing up again. The arrows went harmlessly right through the azure balls of light, piercing the Moblyn's real eyes and into its head. The eye lights flared to violet for a moment, flames of light licking at the arrows, first blackening them, then dusting them away into the air, aught but ash. Violet witch lights pulsed and quavered in the Moblyn's eye sockets, as the body's flesh sagged on the elongated skeletal frame.

"Mercy at best, the body is still possessed, maybe the true Moblyn is dead now." Explained Navi, to which Tatl turned away, seeming to dismiss the allegation, intent upon the skeletal Moblyn, whom ignored the nattering of the faeries this time, seeming far more interested in the hunter, raising a talon again and its eyes flashing golden several times more. The figure in green was already in motion, dancing and darting around the Cathedral ruins, off a wall and then rolling down and low, each time some point of architecture in the hero's wake, and just a second or two behind fractured and splintered under a halo of golden light.

It was a circuitous rout, entirely confusing in its roundabout fashion, but regardless of how much the skeletal figure tried to will the hero to falter or die, the hunter was still gaining ground. Boom. Boom. Boom. Again, and again there was the flash of golden light and some piece of the altar chamber was further ruined. "Enough!" Rasped the skeletal Moblyn, just as the hunter was about to get in close enough to slash at the revenant. There was the brightest flare of golden light yet; erupting out of the center of the skeletal Moblyn, and then it was followed by an ominous structural groaning. The revenant sneered at the hunter defiantly, raising a talon to block, even as the twilight blue steel severed the skeletal arm. Then it happened, the remnants of the Cathedral roof collapsed.

When it was all over, the one-arm Moblyn revenant stood there gloating, most of its remaining flesh peppered off in the blast by falling debris. It wore a laughing grin wider than what remained of its once porcine face. Each bone of a word rolled off in the ghostly grate, "Come now _boy_, your attempts to best me are futile. I will burn all that I have conquered before I forsake it into the hands of another. You cannot defeat me, for I am eternal," the eyes flared in lurid demonic lights at this, setting a creeping twilight mosaic across the strewn rubble, chasing shadows and painting pale patterns of light that whirled and danced with each flicker. There was that mad cacophony of laughter, stripped of the Moblyn's coughing; it was faint and spidery, like a gossamer thread of sounds fed into the recipient's ear.

The cloaked hunter stood, one booted foot on the rubble, the other pinning the severed skeletal arm, and with a yank and jerk, the hunter pulled his blade from out of where it had stuck into the limb with the bisecting stroke. The figure in green flexed his sword arm, the length of cold steel shifting into a dangerously suggestive angle for the revenant. Glacial blue eyes bored into the skeleton, expression mute and unwavering in its determination. The skeleton merely sneered as it inspected the damaged stump with its remaining talon, grating, "I am afraid, diligence will get you no where." Its eyes were livid with golden-violet triumph. Floating out from behind its head, wrapped in cages of golden light, two fairies pulsed and dangled, trapped within orbs of sheer ghostly will. "The more they struggle… the smaller the prisons get. The more you resist… the smaller the prisons get." The hero blanched again for the second time that night, staring at the revenant and the only two companions he had know through it all. "Now..." Said the skeletal figure, even as its severed bony limb flew back to it in a wave of golden light and reattached itself to the severed stump, the revenant hissed, "How about we start by you giving me back _my_ Ocarina."


	8. Act 1, Chapter 8: Bargain Struck

We all feel lost sometimes

We all feel overwhelmed now and again

Often we ask or wonder who we really are

More than this though, are the times we find the edges to our psyches

We are given a choice, if we choose to make it: Jump or turn away

Either we discover the limits, the walls of who we really are, Or...

We descend, going further in a decision we may never come back from

_-The Edge_

* * *

Icy blue eyes tightened into an edged look that promised a high cost and many unpleasant things for the skeletal revenant, but for now the muted figure could only look on from the confines of his cloak, for once caught indecisive. Half of the hero (a half of coldness and ability,) tightened a fist on the twilight blue steel of the bastard sword, seeming ready to advance; his other half fixed its gaze upon those glistening golden cages of pure will manifest. It, the skeletal Moblyn, leered back with that mocking rictus, a bony talon extended, fingers crooked again as to be almost crooning. The talon now reattached and healed back into place, making a gesture that said_ to me, to me,_ waiting for the ocarina.

An internal war was waged within the hero. On one hand, the two fairies were his friends, his companions, his only links back to humanity, to what he was before. Yet on the other, he'd only survived this long (survived an eternity,) by never backing down, and by always being willing to do whatever it took to endure. The Hero of Time was far more the survivor than the heroic champion anymore. Heroes died heroically, in the end, which was about the only thing any of them were really good for. But this one hero hadn't died, he'd survive his eons, and now here he was, left with an impossible decision. Or at least, it should of been impossible.

Perhaps the hunter had already lost his humanity to even contemplate giving up on his friends, to sacrifice them in order to endure…. Perhaps these thoughts coursing through him were the last dying echoes of a former self, the last glimpses of the interred before the final shovel full was laid to rest on their grave. Perhaps it was time to give up friendship, so that it could never be used against him again. This thought did not displease the hunter as much as it should. Rather he regarded it with the same detached and clinical manner he regarded all life. And _that_ did frighten him, but not enough to turn him aside. The hunter took a step forward, sword drawn. The skeleton sneered, and the cages glowed, growing smaller, the faeries starting to be crushed.

No! It almost overwhelmed: the darkness within him with it's coldly seductive rationality. He could feel it itch even now, that dread impulse to forsake his friends and just strike out, so logical: fell the opponent, finish the quest, survive! It strove at him from within, a shadow of the Courage he'd once worn on a the back of one hand. Once it had been divine and glorious, but now it had long since left, off to some other world, some other time, inherited by other Heroes in their time of destiny. But something that powerful did not leave someone unmarked, its passing stained the soul with absence, a void that could not be filled, Courage without light.

Only when that last shred of humanity (,almost smothered under the coldness of rationality,) shone out, did the hunter realize that fro all that he wanted to heft and swing his bastard sword at the unholy specter, he could not. The faeries were too important to him, the last pieces of who he was, his friends. He must persevere, find a way to save them, even at the price of surrender. _I have given everything, this last piece I cannot give. I will keep my friends._ So flashed the message in his glacial blue eyes. Eyes, which were empty of all emotion save for the faintest flickering of life as the hunter laid the Forest Ocarina upon the skeletal, talonned palm.

Flesh-slaked talon curled around the ocarina, the revenant's golden violet eyes boring into hunter before it. " You made the right choice." It offered finally, the golden witch lights then turning to spin in hollow sockets, surveying the many corpses both biological and architectural. "All gone. So much work, to discipline mongreloid rabble into more than just a pack of cowardly, slathering berzerkers. So much work to find and cultivate a base to house them." Mused the revenant, worlds half crawling, and half dragging themselves to the hero's ear. The hero's face grew grimmer as he heard Navi flitter in the golden cage, "You raised an entire town, enslaved so many Moblyn-" The hunter held up a hand, silencing Navi, before the revenant had a chance to compress her cage further. "A means to an end." Spidered the dead voice, one golden-violet eye turning towards the faerie, still addressing the hunter. "And all wasted." The glowing eye turned back to the hunter, "Because of you." The talon raked its claws over the ocarina in contemplation. "I should be angry... but I am not."

Irony and dark amusement seemed to take hold of the revenant's fixed rictus. "Means to an end, you are stronger than them anyway." Navi in her glowing golden cage drifted through the air, and alighted into the skeleton's palm. The revenant studied the hunter carefully, as he held the cage buoyed before the hunter in his grasp. The hunter's glacial eyes tightened again, "Strike me down and the faerie die, nor will it stop me from finding yet another body, perhaps even yours." Spidered the dead voice mater-of-factly. The talon still offering the golden cage up tantalizingly, "Where as...." That sickening skull lowered to the green cloaked figure's ear, a low gossamer whisper passing to the warrior. When at last the long moment passed, the whispered words delivered, a dread wind began to howl and roll through the shattered walls of the Cathedral, heralding the first grey blots of pre-dawn far above.

A slight assent, the barest hint of nod over came from the hunter, stiffly at that. _Agreed._ And with that simplest of gestures, one of the golden cages disappeared, Navi was set free. _Bargains struck._ The revenant slowly rose into the air again, straightening. Bone-wrapping feet strode off with a wet clacking sound over ruined chamber tiles, elongated pale form turning away from the hero. The green cloaked figure sheathed the frigid blue steel into the back scabbard reluctantly; folds of forest green cloak falling about him and back into place, obscuring the hunter's form. He and Navi stalked off, the fixed and dire cant of the hunter's features were shadowed beneath the hat and cowl. As Navi peered over the hunter's shoulder, silent with dismay, the only sound to be heard as they left the Cathedral was the howling of a morning wind, and the hoary mad laughter buried beneath it.


	9. Act 1, Chapter 9: Peril and Presage

One night I dreamt I saw the future,

Mad was I raven unto by what seen,

Indescribable those horrors dreamed:

Those alien tapestries of fate, stitch and suture,

Unraveled by demonic forces of destinies damned,

Lay down the lion, and sacrifce the lamb.

Gods dicing over mortals, macabre and sanguine,

Away did I flee into the waking,

Awoke in my bed, nerves shaking,

Poisoned by prophecies taken,

Prophets, dragon, poes, and moblyn.

_-Saracen Dreamwine, poem_

* * *

He walked away from the Cathedral, forest green cloak swirling about him, one bitter fairy in tow. For once Navi was silent, nothing was left to be said. Tatl had been left behind. His steps echoed over each cobbled paving-stone, down the ruins of a main street that had once served a bustling village on the fringe of the Kokiri Forest. The sullen music of drifting leaves slithered out of the woods, beckoning like some droll symphony, beckoning the hunter to turn and leave this world, this world so close to home, to be as almost home… was it home? The hunter did not know… but still the woods called to him, beckoning ever onwards with that scratching, rhythmic percussion-melody, that maddening rustle and tangle of drifting, sifting leaves.

He walked away not in the direction of the forest, that maddening, beckoning forest that he ignored (bound to it or not…) but set down the direction of the long and winding dirt-packed path that cut a weaving swath through the great, green rolling plains of presumed Hyrule Field. A dim plume of grey streaking smoke, like a dismal ribbon streaming across the pre-morning sky, rose up from the vague silhouette of a settlement cast against the faded horizon. A ranch….

Back at the Cathedral, long after the last silent footfalls of the hunter would have faded from hearing, the first rays of dawn lanced through the lightly clouded sky and pierced through open holes in the Cathedral ruins, illuminating the place within. It was some how more depressing in day, less haunting but more ugly without the soothing darkness to smother over its raw austerity. In the deeper shadows of an alcove, the faint rasping of dry laughter echoed, two azure eyes peered out from the darkness, canting to the wreckage of the hewn altar-throne. "Enjoyed that show, did you, lady? Predictable." The skeletal voice remarked towards the altar. There was no answer.

The elongated compilation of Moblyn bones shifted within the dark alcove, lifting out a jagged talon into the light of the room, the bones sizzled where the sunlight touched it. The talon glowed, and in a haze of golden light, it willed large chunks of roof stones to levitate back up into place, blocking out the sun. Cobbling together the rude imitation of a roof, it created a pool shadows to fall over, towards the altar-throne. The skeletal revenant drifted forward, from out of the darkness and into the shadows under the ersatz-roof.

Foot steps emitted the wrapping of bones on stone, as the jawbone leered in that fixed rictus; behind the revenant was pulled the golden cage of the imprisoned faerie, nattering a string of high pitched fairy obscenities that fell on the ears presumably of only the corpses, revenant, and… the figure who stepped out of the shadows of the altar-throne just then. A figure wrapped in a gown of long black spider's silk (clad loosely over a grey-skinned feminine form,) emerged into the shadows of the Cathedral ruins, not batting an eye at the precariously levitating roof stones over head. Whether this was due to indifference or the fact that no eyes were to be seen behind the figure's featureless alabaster mask was wholly a matter of conjecture.

A lyrical and insipid voice crooned out in reply to the revenant's earlier dry rasping, "Oh come now, you are too cruel Li; you know I can't help but enjoy it when others suffer." The feminine voice almost purred with a definite, sadistic delight; where as the revenant offered only a sardonic, dry whisper in return, "Spare me your kinks, lady, sadism is a short coming I do not so wantonly subscribe too. Inflicting suffering is a tool like any other: apply as needed."

The grey-skinned feminine figure hissed sullenly at the reprimand. She slowly glided to the skeletal revenant's side, flowing through the shadows as one might swim in water. "Oh, kinks? And you so don't like to tease me, Li?" Running long and curling, spidery fingers over the revenant's yellow-aged ivory armor-bones, she simpered in a husky whisper, "I think you enjoy it as much do." "Hardly," Rasped the revenant, disentangling him self from the grey female.

That featureless alabaster mask shifted as the grey head tilted, peering past the revenant suddenly to regard the struggling and militant little faerie behind him, ignoring the skeleton's denial for a moment, "What are you going to do with him," The questioning, feminine voice cut with a dangerous edge, "Lunch is it?" "No," Grated the skeletal revenant, turning to also regard the trapped and raging fairy. "A bargain struck is a bargain kept," He offered finally, "At least…" The azure eyes glowed with violet menace, "so long as it proves useful."

One almost got the sensation of a nose wrinkling and the female making a disgusted face, given the crude twitch of the mask, but that was all the sign of irritation the grey figure gave over the answer, instead clacking her ebony nails teasingly over the revenant's armor, cooing darkly, "Well then I suppose we'll have to hope the little green errand boy accomplishes his task… else…" The featureless alabaster mask continued to gaze longingly upon the faerie. "Else," Agreed the revenant grimly. A mad wind howled through the Cathedral stone ruins far above.


	10. Act 2, Chapter 1: Greyman

What is a person?

What is a personality?

Who are individuals?

Are we just the sum of memory?

Memories shaped by an emotional core,

What are we?

_-Consider Personae_

* * *

Thirst, like a raking claw in the back of a parched throat, it clouded the mind and slackened the feet. He felt a thirst for something, but he had long since passed the dependency for it. His body needed it, yes, but the body would not fall, for time and that is to say death and exhaustion would not collect it. The hero thirsted, hungered, grew tired beyond recollection, and yet was not hampered from wandering on. The hunter could not be stopped by the needs of the body, but he still suffered them just the same. Yet after so many years that thirst was regarded with a cold and clinical detachment; the green cloaked figure's mind simply noted it was thirsty, and carried on, without impulse or inclination to fix it.

Navi followed in his wake, as slow drifts of dust sifted about the supple leather boots, laden light steps on the dirt track, cloak swishing. The sun beat down hard and was high in the sky, and deciding on descent after following how many of the same cycles, the hunter did not know. Had he walked hours across the rolling grass, or was it days? No water but distant river or stream was to be had, and so the hunter did not drink. Time was funny, not just here, but everywhere for the hunter. He made the journey across the vast field, finally reaching the outskirts of a lazy, dry and run-down horse stead, his destination.

It was perched upon the rocks of a slight bulging hill in the grassy plains, with elevated pastures, and dried out, sun-caked stable-yards and horse-tracks, fermenting with the freshness of the waste of the equine occupants. Several dun-roans milled about the central pen, and with yet still more, others half-hidden in the far back-pasture. A cracked and shamble-wood sign marked the horsed stead as some kind of important ranch, but the proper named was all but faded from legible dissertation. There was the air of age and reject about the place; all the buildings were of the same dried out, bleach pale wood that made up the fences and the sign-work. The hunter stopped just short of the illegible sign, his staring cold blue eyes the only ice in that dry heat.

Despite the age and wear of the bones of the place, the ranch was not in neglect. It was sturdy and in good repair, if none of it terribly recent. The job had been done right, and so the upkeep was shabby if well maintained, just antiquated. The entire ranch held a tired vitality, weary but determined in the way of old things of high quality, only the bare nerve and fortuity keeping them going, long after both years and normal convention said they should of right quit. An almost palpable music of dry, silent dust winds and the quiet wickers of the penned and pastured inhabitants filled the ears, as much as the fresh scent of dung filled the nose, and the heat did the air.

Echoes of familiarity came back to the hunter, staggering enough at first, to rent a single small crack in that otherwise imperturbable ice wall of calm. He had been here before, the hunter knew, if not when or why. Some of those memories were gone now, left his head, and couldn't remember, for it was well over a thousand life times ago, and perhaps a million worlds and a billion dreams ago as well. Time was funny out here… time was funny everywhere, and so was the hunter's memory. Navi said nothing, hovering at his side.

"Hungry?" Asked a cracked voice, heavy with age; were the hunter someone else, he might of jumped. Instead, the cowled and cloaked figure turned to the side of the stable yard, where an old man sat resting on a barrel, sharpening the edges of a pitch fork with a stone. While not one to normally miss something, the old man was such a part of the ranch as to be one with the aged woodwork. Hair grey, eyes dark, beard full and curly, the old hostler continued to slowly sharpen the dull pitch fork, saying again, "Are you hungry, there, lad?" The hunter did not reply at first, could not reply at first, and then did not reply after; mute. Cold blue eyes stared at the grey ostler for a long time, silence finally broken as Navi tinkled, "Ingo?" There grey figure looked like Ingo, ancient and grayed, but still Ingo.


End file.
